Hey Guys, new here.Have had my 2017 propel advanced SL 0 red etap for a few months now and must say i absolutely love it.Was torn between it and the TCR, but i dont do a huge amount of climbing so decided on the propel.It replaced a 2008 fuji team RC which i had a bit of a nasty fall on a little while ago. So to make myself feel better, i purchased the Propel. The fuji came off better then i did with only a broken fork, frame was scanned and was all ok, so bought a new fork and rebuilt it.The only thing i would like to do with the propel is to get a second set of wheels for it, as i do find the deep dish ones play havoc with crosswinds.

I cracked the frame of my old Merida and needed a commuter to save my cervelo from racking up lots of kilometres on dura ace components and racing rubber.

So I looked around and found an XL Giant OCR3- sort of an older version / pretty similar geometry to my old Defy, except it takes longer drop brakes so you can run wider rubber.

Picked it up for $350, sold the Alex wheels and Sora 8 x 3 group and FSA SL-K seatpost it had on it for $150 so it cost $200 in the end.

To this I added some new Tektro dual pivot brakes (the ones on the bike were rusty and pitted) and a mish mash of shimano 10 speed components from ultegra 6600, 105 5600 and 5700, with some FSA components to finish - SL-K 120mm stem and 44cm vero bars. Needed an inline seatpost so grabbed a generic one I had and some shimano rs10 wheels from my Merida.

Under 9kg with 28mm continental ultra sports and I love the slightly taller front end and the big tyres for commuting.

Yeah, the OCR is the direct ancestor of the Defy, so very similar in geometry. Good going with the older 10-sp. shifters; the best things short of 11-sp. going around. Just be wary of the left one if it's a pre-update 5600; designed for both double and triple setups, its guts are very sensitive to proper tuning on a double and can be broken if poorly tuned. Post update 5601 (identified by the word "double" on the cover plate below the 105 logo) is OK.

If its not steel it isn't real as they say. we bought this touring bike home today with the view to rebuilding it as a trainer. Pretty sure it needs nothing really in particular, my brother was playing with it today and got the group set somewhat working on it, but given its a 90s vintage bike the shifters are weird and a bit gummy anyhow. I'm going to get my brother to replace the groupset with a new one and look at a new hub for it so I can run a modern 9 speed or 11 speed cassette. It's a 54 and the frame is in the same state as when it came out of the shop. I'm pretty sure it hasn't even really been ridden seriously by anyone in its life

For my recent 40th birthday, my wife surprised me with a bike shopping trip! After visiting around 12 different stores in Sydney, and having no luck finding something in my size (I'm 2m tall) we found a 2017 Giant Defy Advanced 2 in stock.

Purchased it, bought it home and proceeded to ride as much as I could. I put on some crank brothers candy pedals I had spare from my spin bike, and ordered some white R540 pedals and appropriate road shoes (similarly to the bike, none of the shops in Sydney carried a size 49 road shoe, although lots had size 50 strangely)

It was fantastic to ride and a revelation compared to my 2005 Giant Alias MTB (with kid seat on the back, and toddler installed, it's about 40kg vs 8.8 for the Defy)

5 weeks and 330km in to ownership, I was riding along the Windsor Road bike path, when I heard a crack noise (like when you step on a stick) and something hit me in the left calf. Well, that turned out to be a piece of carbon from the seat tube

It's a matt back / orange 2017 Defy Advanced 1 frame, which I gather wasn't offered in Australia. I'm very happy with it. I've done just over 200km on it in the last week and a half, and it's amazing It looks a little strange with the white pedals, but I can live with it

CaffeineAU wrote:Remember that's it's only for the original owner though, not transferable.

That's another reason why Giant is currently the leading contender - I'm planning on buying "the last road bike I'll ever buy" (famous last words....), honestly the plan is to buy something really sweet and keep it until I'm too old to ride it any more. I'm thinking 15 years or more. So a 2 year warranty on competing brands isn't really a selling point for me, although the bikes themselves might be fantastic, I just don't have the money to swap bikes every few years.

When you are driving your car, you are not stuck IN traffic - you ARE the traffic!!!

Hehe, yeah 15 years is a bare minimum I hope, if my scrawny legs keep turning My 26" MTB is soon to celebrate its 15th birthday. I only got that one because my previous one was stolen, otherwise that would've turned 17 by now and could have got its driver's license!

When you are driving your car, you are not stuck IN traffic - you ARE the traffic!!!

It's good that these bikes come with a lifetime warranty. I'd like to know exactly what is considered a "lifetime" though, is it for the reasonable life of a bike (under Australian consumer laws) or is it your lifetime? Is it also transferable to someone else or not? Given I've seen some pretty catastrophic failures such as this one (on a seat post) and on my brother's BMC team machine, I second guess the purpose of carbon for a daily which is another reason why I'm going back to steel for my own commuter bike.

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